Facebook, one of the fastest growing websites in the world, announced two significant developments in the past few weeks that could spur even further interest for the social networking powerhouse. The first is an Arabic language version of the site intended to attract the region's 250 million native speakers online. <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090320/NATIONAL/995647205&SearchID=73348961213618">In a story written by <em>National</em> reporters Tom Spender and Keach Hagey</a>, analysts call the move "a development" in bridging the gap between the Arabic community and the online world. online content is in Arabic, according to Mazen Halawi, a corporate sales manager from the Arabic-language search engine Ayna. Arabic is the world's fifth-most spoken language. However, the second and much more contentious announcement made by Facebook has announced, is a radical makeover of its main profile page. Instead of displaying a general feed of recent news, notes, friend requests and the like, the site now resembles the new social networking site <em>du jour</em> Twitter. Fresh off the heels of a spurned acquisition attempt for US$500 million in company stock, Facebook has unabashedly mimicked Twitter's communication style, replacing '@' replies with a dour-looking arrow, making user pictures in the same square-boxed manner and shifting content boxes around for a more streamlined presentation. While users often show some measure of revolt whenever Facebook has changed its look in the slightest, it appears that the noise has reached somewhat of a fervant pitch, even within its own employees. From <a href="http://gawker.com/5177341/even-facebook-employees-hate-the-redesign?t=11505856#viewcomments">ValleyWag</a>: Software developer offers his frustration with the new design: Over at suggest Facebook should have listened more to its users before trying to reinvent the wheel: While it is understandable not to enflame the 180 million-odd users that login to the site, I tend to side with that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is right to do whatever he wants with his site - if only to position itself to finally make some of that cash it promises to one day attract. Given that the recent events evoked a that questions how Google could ever make any money - and we all know how that turned out - maybe Facebook's latest move could be the start of something big. Very big. <em>(Photo: Negin, a 21-year old Iranian woman, browses her Facebook page at her home in Tehran.</em> Credit - Newsha Tavakolian / The National)